Ok if yo go to like a local blockbuster or something, wherever you rent...they should have this movie.This movie left me with my thumb up my ass.I was in complete awe.

Rollercoaster:

Rollercoaster spends a day with five extremely confused adolescents who's lives have seen more lows than highs. They break into an abandoned amusement park as a diversion from their lives in a group home. Two of the characters have made a suicide-pact, and another keeps a painful secret.

Scott Smith put in an outstanding amount of work as the writer, director and producer of Rollercoaster. Having made its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival in 1999 it has since been presented at over thirty other festivals worldwide. The course of transit has allowed it to win numerous awards and nominations, critical acclaim, and praise from audiences, while at the same time stirring up controversy among those who think it depraved.

Smith utilizes direction and the cinematography by Robert Aschmann to an amazingly natural effect. Visually organizing the troubled adolescents and realistically communicating the themes of suicide, homosexuality, abuse, love and friendship; Scott executes this with documentary-style cinematography and at times a captivating use of lighting.

The five teens have stolen their counsellor's car and headed to a defunct amusement park. The group consists of Stick (Brendan Fletcher in an amazing performance), Chloe (Crystal Bublé), Darrin (Kett Turton), Justin (Brent Glenen) and Sanj (Sean Amsing). Chloe and Darrin are two young lovers in a confusing bind who make a pact of love to jump from the top of the rollercoaster at the park.

The abandoned amusement park appears to serve as a perfect paradoxical metaphor, highlighting the intrinsic turmoil faced by the teens: The joy associated with innocence as well as the dreadful sense of loneliness. The rollercoaster almost mirrors the emotional one the characters are all experiencing, with twists, plateaus, drops and valleys.

To thoroughly communicate the realism of the adolescents' anxiety, and the issues at hand, Smith directs the film with a style much like hand-held documentaries, which emphasizes the feeling of here-and-now.

The slight incessant, but fluid movement of the camera almost allows the viewers to sit as a bystander in the presence of the characters. Such is the case when the kids are huddled in a little shack while they share their booze, drugs, and intimate feelings. The close-ups of characters faces, low-key lighting, and long static frames increase the unspoken tension between the friends, along with their consolidated feelings of powerlessness and frustration in general. This is the only scene in which Smith really emphasizes their friendship to one another with their opening up about their feelings, though the high-contrast lighting sets the scene with a feeling of obscurity and isolation in characters - which proves accurate as the film progresses.

Though approaching the end for Chloe and Darrin, as all the characters have deviated through fits of mistrust, and confusion with love, friendship and even truth with one another - the stress settles and dusk darkens to night. The rapid flashing lights of the park juxtaposed with the kids fuelling of booze, drugs, love and tension works with Bob Aschmann's stunning cinematography capturing the truth behind the characters' feelings, accents an incredible beginning of the end. A stunning sequence in which Darrin stands atop the rollercoaster as he considers his suicide, is augmented with a close-up of his face, while the lights of the ride rapidly light his facial expressions with constant low-key multicoloured blocks of lights in reds, greens, and yellows, occasionally falling in to the blackness of night behind him.

The shaking of the camera, rapid, bright and contrasting lights, only increase the tension of an already intense situation. Smith works to explore the scene of suicide, though he does not however attempt to explore the idea, nor intellectualize the psychology of it as much as the emotion of the moment.

However, though Smith uses his techniques quite effectively, at times the prolonged scenes of aimless walking around the amusement park or the chat between characters and almost insignificant character of Sanj seem to distract the viewer from the tensions. Though in select cases it works to highlight the extremes of the dull reality with the tension and drama unfolding.

Despite this minute detail, Smith reaches to push the envelope with the most "controversial" aspect of the movie; that of Stick's coming to terms with his homosexuality, along with his molestation by a "nice-guy" security guard. This adds an element of complete confusion and disequilibrium. The horrible paralyzation a kid would face after being molested by a person of the same sex while he struggles to come to terms with his sexual orientation, and dealing with that, acts to utterly confuse and daunt him; and the audience.

There is nothing stereotypical about the characters, who are played with an astuteness beyond their years by a gifted cast. The viewer sees the world through each one's eyes throughout the narrative structure: the bleak and cruel world made only endurable by their adolescent antics supported with drugs, and alcohol. The film concludes with a multitude of unanswered questions about the characters, which only seems to capture the reality and directness of their experience even more.